IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/econom/v82y2015i328p976-993.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Take-up of Free School Meals: Price Effects and Peer Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Angus Holford

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="ecca12147-abs-0001"> 29% of the 1.4 million eligible children do not participate in the UK's Free School Meals programme. Like other welfare benefits, take-up of free school meals is affected by stigma and lack of information. This paper uses a fixed-effect instrumental variables strategy to evaluate the role of peer-group participation in overcoming these barriers. Identification of endogenous peer effects is achieved by exploiting a scheme that extended free school meal entitlement to all children in some areas. Results show that a 10 percentage point rise in peer-group take-up reduces non-participation by 3.3–4.0 percentage points, or between 29% and 35%.

Suggested Citation

  • Angus Holford, 2015. "Take-up of Free School Meals: Price Effects and Peer Effects," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(328), pages 976-993, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:82:y:2015:i:328:p:976-993
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ecca.2015.82.issue-328
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John S. Akin & David K. Guilkey & Barry M. Popkin & James H. Wyckoff, 1983. "The Demand for School Lunches: An Analysis of Individual Participation in the School Lunch Program," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 18(2), pages 213-230.
    2. Ethan Cohen-Cole & Giulio Zanella, 2008. "Welfare Stigma or Information Sharing? Decomposing Social Interactions Effects in Social Benefit Use," Department of Economics University of Siena 531, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    3. Aizer, Anna & Currie, Janet, 2004. "Networks or neighborhoods? Correlations in the use of publicly-funded maternity care in California," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2573-2585, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yaru Chen & Xiao Han & Siyao Lv & Boyao Song & Xinye Zhang & Hongxun Li, 2022. "The Influencing Factors of Pro-Environmental Behaviors of Farmer Households Participating in Understory Economy: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-20, December.
    2. Ha Trong Nguyen & Huong Thu Le & Luke B Connelly, 2021. "Who's declining the “free lunch”? New evidence from the uptake of public child dental benefits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 270-288, February.
    3. Julie Janssens & Natascha Van Mechelen, 2017. "Who is to Blame? An Overview of the Factors Contributing to the Non-Take-Up of Social Rights," Working Papers 1708, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    4. Altindag, Duha T. & Baek, Deokrye & Lee, Hong & Merkle, Jessica, 2020. "Free lunch for all? The impact of universal school lunch on student misbehavior," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Deokrye Baek & Yongjun Choi & Hong Lee, 2019. "Universal Welfare May Be Costly: Evidence from School Meal Programs and Student Fitness in South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-18, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qingyan Shang, 2014. "Endogenous neighborhood effects on welfare participation," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 639-667, September.
    2. Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Social Interactions within Cities: Neighborhood Environments and Peer Relationships," Working papers 2009-31, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    3. Steven N. Durlauf & Yannis M. Ioannides, 2010. "Social Interactions," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 451-478, September.
    4. Marianne P. Bitler & Madeline Zavodny, 2014. "Medicaid: A Review of the Literature," NBER Working Papers 20169, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Delia Furtado & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2012. "Immigrant Networks and the Take-Up of Disability Programs: Evidence from US Census Data," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 09-2012, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    6. Di Ciommo, Floridea & Comendador, Julio & López-Lambas, María Eugenia & Cherchi, Elisabetta & Ortúzar, Juan de Dios, 2014. "Exploring the role of social capital influence variables on travel behaviour," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 46-55.
    7. Patrick Bayer & Stephen L. Ross, 2006. "Identifying Individual and Group Effects in the Presence of Sorting: A Neighborhood Effects Application," Working papers 2006-13, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2009.
    8. Assar Lindbeck & Mårten Palme & Mats Persson, 2016. "Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 118(1), pages 49-78, January.
    9. Aslund, Olof & Fredriksson, Peter, 2005. "Ethnic Enclaves and Welfare Cultures: Quasi-Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 1536, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Manuela Angelucci & Silvia Prina & Heather Royer & Anya Samek, 2015. "When Incentives Backfire: Spillover Effects in Food Choice," NBER Working Papers 21481, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Burton Mark & Macher Jeffrey & Mayo John W, 2007. "Understanding Participation in Social Programs: Why Don't Households Pick up the Lifeline?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-28, November.
    12. Vincent Dautel & Alessio Fusco, 2021. "Investigating neighbourhood effects in welfare-to-work transitions," LISER Working Paper Series 2021-05, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    13. Arthur Alik-Lagrange & Martin Ravallion, 2016. "Social Frictions to Knowledge Diffusion: Evidence from an Information Intervention," NBER Working Papers 21877, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Sriya Iyer & Michael Kitson & Bernard Toh, 2005. "Social capital, economic growth and regional development," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(8), pages 1015-1040.
    15. Moscone, Francesco & Tosetti, Elisa & Vittadini, Giorgio, 2009. "Social Interaction in Patients'�Hospital Choice: Evidences from Italy," MPRA Paper 17783, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Marcelo Arbex & Jéssica Faciroli & Ricardo Silva Freguglia & Marcel de Toledo Vieira, 2023. "Brazil’s Bolsa Família: Neighborhood and Racial Group Networks," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(4), pages 593-610, April.
    17. Mari Rege & Kjetil Telle & Mark Votruba, 2012. "Social Interaction Effects in Disability Pension Participation: Evidence from Plant Downsizing," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(4), pages 1208-1239, December.
    18. George, Lisa M. & Peukert, Christian, 2019. "Social networks and the demand for news," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    19. Ha Trong Nguyen & Huong Thu Le & Luke B Connelly, 2021. "Who's declining the “free lunch”? New evidence from the uptake of public child dental benefits," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(2), pages 270-288, February.
    20. Blume,L.E. & Durlauf,S.N., 2005. "Identifying social interactions : a review," Working papers 12, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:82:y:2015:i:328:p:976-993. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.